Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘Cupcake Polish’

I promised you color, so here is color! And glitter. And triangle shapes. Basically, while I was on night float in the hospital, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be seeing an attending physician (head doctor) for two whole weeks, and that the senior resident working with me couldn’t care less about my nails. So I wen’t nuts. Bright colors? Landscapes? GLITTER? yes please!

THis particular design was inspired by Simply Nailogical, because I had 90% of the same polish she did. But then I added extra holo because 1) I love it and 2) I figured she would approve. Voila!

So, when I said a week ago that that purple was my last new polish I lied. Technically I painted these nails before the others, but I had forgotten to post them! So here, have some more purple and fun splatter stamps.

What you see here are two thin coats of Isadora by Zoya, a purple metallic with pink shimmer. When I went through and did the polish comparisons I thought it was similar to the lovely Giada…but different enough that I obviously needed to keep them both 😀 I love deep purple metallics.

I ended up double stamping over Isadora using two images from the Make Your Mark 02 plate. These images just seem infinitely combinable! I used my most pigmented purple holo first and then a pale pink….before I added top coat you could easily see the outline of the purple holo but once I added the top coat it kinda melted into the background!

At angles I could still pick out where the holo polish was…and then I noticed that the overlaying pink had turned bright purple! So I guess Berry Good Looking bleeds color (I think I knew that and had just forgotten) but in this setting it looked really cool!

Eeep! Sorry for the extended absence…after moving a WEEK ago, AT&T failed to install our internet and we didn’t get wifi until today! So this really is the first time I could have posted :-p

Anyway, this mani is wayyy too complicated! A stamp this complicated needs a creme-on-creme finish, none of this playing with 5 colors of holographic glittery purple and stamping in silver. I love the stamps but this is too much!

I also likely should not have added dots. Oops! Live and learn. It’s still kinda fun!

Deep Purple Cremes: How are “deep” purple cremes different from “dark” purple cremes? I don’t know, Maybe the other post is more medium purples? Either way, these are the other purple cremes that I own, which to me seemed like a different grouping. Really, these are the blue-leaning dark purples and Monday had the red-leaning purples.

Three of the 5 polishes were two coats, except Wine-y and Paparazzi, which were three. Wine-y and Monica are almost dupes, if you ignore the fact that Monica has a much much better formula! None of the others are remotely similar, other than being purple. Paprazzi is more of a blurple anyway! I think it is safe to part with Wine-y.

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Dark Purple Holos: I was hoping that most of these would look like each other and I would be left with 2-3 polishes total, but they are all so different! Ugh. And yet, so pretty.

For density, Effect and Zoe both took three coats, the others were all opaque at two. In terms of the dark scattered holos, Effect is darker than Zoe, and Zoe has visible shards rather than just glitters, with the addition of some really pretty shimmer. I think I need to keep both! For the linear purple holos, Crown is more of a shimmer than a holo, but leans more blue than the others and has absolutely perfect application, Berry remains a freaking rainbow (still one of the polishes that I gasp at when I put it on) but has actually turned more red since I got it? I still love it. Vallis is prettier and more holo than I remember but I still hate the bottle shape with its long pointy top! I was hoping to part with Vallis but it is such an interesting unique red-purple holo shade that I think I need to keep it and actually use it…eventually.

Friday begins the 31 Day Challenge! I have quite a bit of a back log (…most of which I will be clearing with this challenge), but I figured for today and Wednesday I should post a few of my older manis that I consider complete fails! So, have a peacock fail.

As it turns out, every time I try to stamp peacock feathers, I end up disappointed! I really want to like these, but I just can’t quite get myself there 😦 The background is just the WRONG shade and the colors of the feathers…meh.

I started with two coats of Charlotte by Zoya (one of the mini’s from a free thing a while back), and sponged on the flakies from Festival by Picture Polish. They don’t pop nearly enough! Also, they are impossible to clean out of cuticles.

I then stamped on the peacock feather design from plate JQ-L20, using three of my favorite polishes: Tristam and Saint George by A England and Berry Good Looking by Cupcake Polish. Pretty color combo (I need to play with it more) but the feathers pop almost too much!

Anyway, I tried and I did not succeed to make something feathery and fantastic. I think I might go back to hand-painting some feathers using these polishes….in the eventual future where I pretend I have free time to attempt something as time-consuming as freehanded feathers! *sigh*. I did not enjoy these, so I won’t ask if you did! Stay tuned for an even WORSE fail on Wednesday! Then the good manis start, I promise.

Hello! I was looking through my stats for this past year trying to figure out what I wanted to post for my top nail art…and it looks like fewer and fewer people are actually reading this. I don’t know if that’s due to people using RSS feeds of various types (I like the bloglovin’ layout better than wordpress) but still. Sad! Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop blogging though. Even if two of my favorite bloggers just left 😦

ANYWAY favorite polishes. I got ~50 new polishes this year, so I don’t actually have that many to choose from…but this was pretty easy. Most of them jumped out at me. One polish that made the top 10 I forgot to actually show you guys (ooooops) so I’ll be on next years top 10 I guess! That being said, if you want to get it now while it is still around, for honorable mention (aka I haven’t edited the photos yet but its a great polish) go look at Shadow on the Moon by Emily de Molly.

2) Emily de Molly – Crystal Crown…probably one of my most-worn polishes this year. It is great for work, elegant occasions, and just generally awesome. It is also super pretty.

3) Bow Polish – Thermal Top Coat (black)…also for obvious reasons. I can see this featuring a LOT in my nail art in the future!

4) ILNP – Clockwork…this is almost a cop-out since I put Fame on last years top 10, but I really REALLY love these polishes, and Clockwork is stunning!

5) Emily de Molly – Open Season…this is the only glitterbomb (well, with larger glitters) on this years list. I got fewer of this type of polish this year, but of the ones I bought this was hands-down my favorite. It is rich and stunning.

6) A England – Briarwood…I more than doubled my A England stash this year, and of the 5 new polishes I got, this was the coolest. I don’t usually go for browns, but the rich shimmer and the holo finish made this easily one of my favorite new acquisitions this year!

7) Cupcake Polish – Berry Good Looking…this is almost cheating. Last year, almost every top 10 list I saw contained this polish, and I decided that if that many people loved it, then I needed to get it. I am so glad I did. I don’t own anything that is this ridiculously color saturated and holographic. It is awesome.

8) Nails Inc – Regents Place…the only creme on the list this year is NOT a Zoya polish! Most of my Zoyas were bought over the black Friday sale and I haven’t worn most of them…but even so I have not been stunned by their color choices this year. I got this particular polish on the clearance rack at ULTA and the color is just perfect!

9) Emily de Molly – Stockpile…I might have a problem with how many Emily de Molly polishes I buy. Seriously. This is the third one on this list! Although that’s mostly Hayley’s fault for making perfect polishes. This is basically Crystal Crown’s grown up older sister. I love it but it is NOT subtle!

10) Powder Perfect – Microcosm…this polish has been sadly discontinued, but it was great while it lasted! I had trouble describing it when I first saw it, and this hasn’t changed. This polish is mind-blowingly complicated, and not for the faint of heart. I don’t own anything else like it, and it should be overly complicated but somehow works. It makes my top 10 for this year!

And that’s all! What have I missed? Any new polishes this past year that I absolutely need to buy?

I don’t even know why I named it this. In my defense, this was done around Halloween! But I think it also looks winter-y so it is going here, with my beginning of winter manis week.

The base polish is three coats of Dark & Twisty by KBShimmer which I got at their sale back in October. It is a black jelly (hence three coats) with copious tiny metallic glitters in rainbow colors. It is like the younger sister to Strung Out, one of their holiday releases from a few years ago. That being said, it went on much easier and was far easier to remove! I love glitter bombs with giant glitter like Strung Out…but I never wear them because taking them off makes me cry. Dark & Twisty is glittery while being slightly subtle and was totally easier to get off!

Also, I feel like the smaller glitters are easier to pick out in the black jelly base…they don’t sink under the black color as much.

This post was edited and written in FEBRUARY. Yes. I am terrible. In my defense, when I edited the art and wrote up the post, my computer spontaneously decided to delete all that I had written! Why do I bother typing things up as I go! This is insane. I can’t be too mad, as this is my new favorite polish (ooooooh prettttty) but still. I took NOTES and EVERYTHING. And now it’s gone. Regardless, it works for Purple Day and it has waited long enough, so here we go!

I bought Berry Good Looking by Cupcake Polish because EVERYONE recommended it in their “favorites of 2015” list, and if 4+ bloggers all recommend the same polish, I am going to buy it. That never happens. It was a great idea…this polish is INCREDIBLE.

Berry Good Looking is a bright magenta strong linear holo. This is two thin coats (I maybe could have gotten away with one) and my camera is SPAZZING. The sunlight photos are the most color-accurate. Its almost a hot purple-pink with holo that makes me dizzy. This polish you guys, this polish. It didn’t even stain!

I went ahead and did a double geometric stamp with Emily de Molly plate 03, because I did not want to cover up the holo-y goodness. I’m pretty sure I used a light purple (Malia by Zoya? Royalty Reinvented by L’Oreal? One of those two) and a white. No idea which one! This is why my posts shouldn’t delete themselves 😦

Anyway, if you are in the market for a truly incredible holo, go buy Berry Good Looking. The whole internet agrees with me! Or I agree with them. Either way. Maybe I’ll make my bridesmaids wear this at my wedding, it’s the right color and has the appropriate level of WOAH! 😀 Then again, I don’t really want anyone *cough sister cough* tripping walking down the isle, so maybe not…

Anyway, happy Purple Day! Tomorrow begins the color combo part (which, clearly I’ve been using multiple colors this whole time so whatever).